An American Writer's Thoughts on Japanese Animation

Month: December 2019

On Wax Wings – Guilty Crown Spoiler Review

So, this is a bit of a weird one – I’ve already done a whole Audio Commentary series on Guilty Crown, what more could I possibly have to say?

Well, really, what I want to do is break down Guilty Crown in a more controlled manner, having the ability now to look back on the whole thing. Perspective is a big deal, and with it I’ve found that my opinion is somewhat different than it was in the middle. In addition to that, not everybody wants to sit through an Audio Commentary, and unlike Hundred I think Guilty Crown is worth a closer look.

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Clockwork Planet Audio Commentary

Merry Xmas, everyone! Since we’re all for presents today, I present a whole new Audio Commentary series. This will probably be the last one for a while — at least, it’s the last I have scheduled for the time being. Unlike the other entries, Guilty Crown and Hundred, Clockwork Planet… turned out to not be that bad. Don’t get me wrong, there’s some amazingly lame stuff in this and it can make for some good snarking, but there’s enough legit stuff that I can recommend the show at least as a popcorn muncher affair. So really, I would recommend watching along this time!

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It’s Some Wonderful Madness – The Disappearance of Haruhi Suzumiya Spoiler Review

You know, I’ve never enjoyed watching It’s A Wonderful Life. Not that it’s a bad film – far from it! It’s amazingly well acted, with brilliant cinematography and everything else people say about it. If anything, its problem might be that in a sense it’s too good. I end up feeling so much of the pain and misery through the middle of the film that even though I totally recognize its quality, I don’t have a good time with it. It just isn’t that kind of film for me.

Most of its imitators, though, are hard to watch for the usual reasons. The original, despite my personal aversion to viewing it again, had a subtle touch and a lot of skill behind it. As is often (but not always) true of great works, attempting to imitate what a master was able to do without being a master is a recipe for disaster. So, you can imagine my trepidation when I learned that the cinematic followup to the Haruhi Suzumiya series was supposed to be cut from the cloth of It’s a Wonderful Life. That film’s what we’re looking at today – I know I usually do a series for Monday, but it’s Christmas week, you’ll excuse me a little diversion from the usual in order to stay on theme.

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Trying Hard and Falling Flat – AnoHana Spoiler Review

So, before launching into the review, it’s worth noting that the site has been updated. The “About” page now contains actual content, there’s a brand new “Novels” page for advertising my current and future novels, an “Index” page that collects reviewed shows by letter grade, and a “Contact” page ready for all the hate mail folks will probably want to send me because it’s time to look into AnoHana and I’m going to come out and say… I didn’t care for it.

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 10

What a way to enter a hiatus.

Because, yeah, in case you hadn’t heard, Episodes 11 and 12 of Azur Lane will be delayed… to March. The reasons given for doing this seem to tie back to the animation quality. While I’ve been more interested in the plot and story structure, I have alluded to the state of the animation and… you know, I’ve seen worse telling better stories, but I can’t say I don’t understand having a desire to submit better work. When we get the remastered rerun (assuming the full run gets touched up), I’ll be watching it, but I won’t rerun an episode-by-episode look through. If there are substantive changes, rather than it just looking better, I’ll cover them in an article before Episode 11. Otherwise, this series will just enter hibernation and return when Episode 11 actually debuts.

That out of the way, let’s talk about our last episode for a while.

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First Impressions Can Be Deceiving – Girl in Twilight Spoiler Review

So, Girl in Twilight is a confusing little show that’s difficult to summarize, in part because it clearly wants to be a little bit of everything. It’s a bizarre dive into even stranger scenarios – half the time you’ll be questioning why we, as the audience, are going along with any of this… but the other half the time you won’t care because the show is good at taking something insane and making you believe if not the scenario than at least the emotions.

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Seasonal Selection – Azur Lane Episode 9

And here we get the breather episode before what will presumably be the climactic set, It’s possible we might not launch right back into action; at the least, the common pacing of AL episodes would dictate we have the first half of an episode to talk things over before getting into more action. All the same, there was a lot that needed setting up, so we’ll go through how the show handled those topics.

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